Anne-Lene Sand | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

In-Between: Exploring Small Cracks of Everyday Life is an anthology comprising contributions from a group of social scientists all preoccupied with the possibilities and potentials of working ethnographically. The chapters of the book investigates a range of small everyday life ‘cracks’ – a notion covering unnoticed, withdrawn and overlooked phenomena alike, and which designate the metaphorical interstices and in-betweens that influence and affect most aspects of everyday experience, the comprehensive field also subject to ethnographic inquiry. The chapters in the anthology are all based on original fieldwork and explore different cracks occurring in-between humans as well as in-between humans and non-human entities.

 

A distinct element of the book as a whole is that it comprises experiments in terms of both ethnographic writing approaches as well as with the construction of analytical objects. The argument consistently going through the separate chapters, as well as through the volume in entirety, is that the many wondrous, mysterious, odd and puzzling phenomena encountered in everyday life are not necessarily grasped best by the application of strictly rational and rigorous academic approaches. To the contrary, and as the authors all demonstrate in their own manner, social science can also seek to fathom these sides of human existence with analytical explorations that are both sensitive, bold and infused with responsive and creative intensity.